






ADDRESS 



WILLIAM H. LAMBERT, 

if MECDBAl'I^N BAY, i 

MAY 30, 1879. 






ADDRESS 



Post No. 2, Dept of Penn'a, 



c .uumc 



WILLIAM H. LAMBERT, 



MONUMENT CEMETERY, PHILADELPHIA, 



DOBATIOPJ DA¥. 



PHILADELPHIA : 
Press of Culbertson & Bache, 727 Jayne Street, 
1879. 

r 



ONE HUNDRED COPIES PRIVATELY PRIM 



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'C^TT^WENTY years ago, .we regarded the Revolution as 
!J^M>ft pre-eminently the Nation's heroi 



pre-eminently the Nation's heroic age, and though 
less than a century separated us from that era, so 
great were its achievements, so beneficent its results, that its 
men were to us, what the demi-gods of the early day were to 
the later Greece and Rome — more than human and only less 
than divine. 

And when we contrasted those great men and their measures 
with the men and the measures of our own time, such was the 
disparity, that we could scarcely realize the years were so few 
that parted us. 

" For Romans in Rome's quarrel 
Spared neither land nor gold, 
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life 
In the brave days of old. " * 

" There were giants in the earth in those days," and so 
dwarfed were we by comparison with them, that we seemed of 
baser blood and of less noble heritage. 

The long years of unbroken peace within our borders, the 
slight cost to us of our citizenship, our absorption in the 



^Macaulay: Uoratius. 



business ot every day life, made us doubttui of our devotion to 
the country for which they had sacrificed so much. 

The heroes and the martyrs belonged to the historic past, 
they seemed to have no part in our living present. 

The flag was dear to us because it symbolized the glories of 
our early history, but our interest was in its past association, 
rather than in its present promise or in its future hope. 

Travelers told us of the high emotions awakened by the 
sight of the flag in foreign lands, but we scarcely realized their 
story. E'ow and then some brave deed beneath its folds, in- 
spired by its presence, quickened our pulses — as when the 
gallant little army in Mexico, over hard fought fields, reached 
the capital, and planted the banner on the Halls ot the Montezu- 
mas — but, after all, it was only a beautiful emblem to be dis- 
played on national gala days and then laid aside until their 
next recurrence. 

Party lines divided us, and we believed our diflferences were 
too radical for us to be united upon any question of national 
importance. 

We were a plodding, prosaic people, proud of our past, 
anxious for the present, uncertain of the future. 

When lo! the shot on Sumter dispelled all doubt, dissi- 
pated all gloom, and transformed the Nation. We trod a new 
earth, we breathed a purer air, a brighter heaven shone above 
us. 

The blood of the fathers coursed in our veins, and we knew 
that it was for us they had suftered and died. 

The flag was no longer a mere historic emblem, it was a 
living principle worthy of costliest sacrifice. 

We were no longer Whigs, Democrats, Republicans — we 
were citizens of a common country. 

We were living among heroes in a new heroic age, and 
to-day we are gathered to honor the graves of its martyrs. 



From the spring when the land flowered forth in the na- 
tional colors and a people rushed to arms, to the bright May 
daj^s when the triumphant hosts marched in grand review 
through the capital of the Nation their valor had saved — through 
victory and defeat, through joy and through sorrow, amid 
cheering hopes and gloomy fears — it was an heroic age — an 
age of high resolve and of gallant deed, of noble purpose and of 
generous self-sacrifice — an age in which to live was sublime. 

Richer by the experience of the war and by the wisdom of 
added years, we look back upon those days and smile at the 
ignorance of our zeal. We read the records of the time and 
wonder that we could have entertained hopes so vague, opin- 
ions so crude ; but we fondly cherish the memory of those days 
because of the sincerity and earnestness which distinguished 
them from all that went before, and in the light of which all 
that have followed are tame and lifeless. 

Standing amid these graves, we who have lived to behold 
the reaction from the fervid enthusiasm of the war ; we who 
in these last years have sometime doubted the value of the 
victory ; we from whose eyes the glamour has vanished, can 
but envy the martyrs who fell in the glow of conflict, confident 
of the final triumph of the flag. 

Our martyrs! — these gallant men, whose privilege it was to 
Jiallow the close of the Nation's century, as the Revolutionary 
heroes had sanctified its dawn ; who have taught us that 
chivalry did not die with mailed knighthood ; who have 
shown the world that simple manhood, boastless of ancient 
lineage, accustomed only to ways of peace, could, inspired by 
noblest purpose, achieve in this, our century, deeds of valor 
unsurpassed in all the ages, the recital of which shall encourage 
all who, in ages yet to come, shall dare for country and for 
freedom. 

In wars of the magnitude of ours, though crowded with 



6 



feats of courage, opportunities for individual distinction are 
rare and the names are but few, which shall be recorded in 
general history and be transmitted as familiar words to latest 
generations. 

Except in the memory of comrades and of friends, except as 
cherished — a precious heritage — by their descendants, save as 
enrolled upon official records and carved on memorial stones, 
the names of the thousands of heroes whose death we mourn 
to-day, will soon be forgotten ; for the glory and the greatness 
of these men is not that they were brave beyond their fellows, 
but that they, in common with their brethren, obeyed the call 
of their country in its hour of need, fought gallantly in its 
defence, and for it devoted their lives. 

But, though their names may be forgotten, the work which 
they wrought abides. Though in the hereafter, amid the 
accumulating glories of our later history, even the armies and 
the leaders of the war may fade into dim, hallowed memories, 
so long as the starry flag continues the emblem of a free and 
great Republic, the results achieved by his devotion shall 
remain — monument of the gallantry and patriotism of the 
American soldier. 

Fortunately for the welfare of the Republic, the war pro- 
duced no one central figure in whose presence all others sink 
into insignificance ; no one name whose history is the history 
of the war ; no Csesar or Napoleon whose towering pre-emi- 
nence o'ershadows the country whose armies he led. 

Not Meade at Gettysburg, staying the highest wave of 
rebellion ; not Sheridan in the Valley, wresting victory from 
defeat, or at Five Forks, dealing the death blow to the Army 
of Northern Virginia ; not Sherman in the wonderful cam- 
paign to Atlanta, or on that March to the Sea, which severed 
the Confederacy ; not Thomas at Nashville, in that completest 
victory of the war ; not Grant at Vicksburg, securing the 



passage of the Mississippi unvexed to the sea, or at Appomat- 
tox, receiving the surrender of Lee's shattered legions — was 
savior of the country. 

The hero of our war, the deliverer of our Nation was — under 
God — none other than our people. They, in their armies, and 
in their homes, never, in darkest gloom, lost faith in the right- 
eousness of their cause or trust in its ultimate triumph. From 
first to last, hopefully, steadfastly, religiously, thej' endured, 
and through endurance won. 

And I believe that the most precious lesson of the long 
struggle from which the Republic emerged without sur- 
render of the principle of self-government is, that the safety 
of government by the people rests, in war as in peace, not upon 
the strong arm, or the iron will, or the brilliant genius of any 
single man, but upon the courage, the devotion and the patri- 
otism of the whole people for whom and by whom the govern- 
ment exists. 

God grant that the existence of the Nation may never 
rest upon narrower foundations. 

Yet, though our war was eminently the war of a people, and 
though it was to the courage and loyalty of the many that the 
final triumph was due, we cannot, as we would not, forget 
the skill and the heroism of the men to whom it was given to 
lead our armies, and to whose honor be it always remembered 
that none of them ever sought to exercise the authority he 
held, save for the common good ; that none ever forgot he 
was servant of the Republic, not its master. 

Nor can we forget him, to whom, more than to any other, 
we are indebted for the success of our arms and the preserva- 
tion of the Nation ; that great man who subordinated all per- 
sonal aims and desires to the welfare of the country ; who, 
though wielding imperial power, never ceased to be the single- 
hearted, modest citizen ; who, whatever the success which 
crowned our arms, arrogated to himself none of the glory, but 



8 

always accorded the praise to the men who followed the flag; 
whose simple words of unsurpassed eloquence, uttered upon the 
greatest field of the war, form the noblest tribute lips have 
rendered to the Nation's dead ; and who, amid cares and burdens 
of crushing weight, found opportunity to write words of loving 
sympathy, such as these which I commend to all who this 
day grieve for their dear ones slain : 

" I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine 
which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss 
so overwhelming. But I cannot retrain from tendering to you 
the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Re- 
public they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father 
may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you 
only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the 
solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacri- 
fice upon the altar of freedom." * 

" So always firmly he : 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide. 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
'Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums. 

Disturb our judgment for the hour. 
But at last silence comes : 

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower. 
Our children. shall behold his fame, 

The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." f 

Honest, steadfast, martyred Abkaham Lincoln. 



* Letter to Mrs. Bixby. Vide Raymond : Life of Abraham Lincoln, p 616. 
t Lowell : Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21st, 1865. 



9 



To-day we decorate the graves of all our martyrs, whatever 
the rank and station of their lives, recognizing in the honors 
we pay alike to President, to General and to private soldier, 
this, their common glory — they faithfullj served their country 
and died for the flag. 

Fourteen years have passed since the war ended. Nature 
and art have done much to efi:ace the traces of the terrible 
strife ; trench and earthwork have been leveled, and the grass 
and the grain are waving over the fields so long brown and 
bare under the tread of marching hosts and the shock of con- 
tending armies, 

A war of intensest bitterness has been followed by uue- 
qualed magnanimity. 

No prison confines any punished for raising armed hands 
against the Government ; no grave is the resting-place of any 
whose lives paid the penalty of treason. 

They who sought the Nation's life now make the Nation's 
laws. 

No arch of triumph in the Capital, no column of victory 
commemorates the success of our armies — the humiliation of 
the foe. 

No day of rejoicing and gladness is set apart whose annual 
recurrence celebrates the close of the war — the deliverance of 
the Nation. 

This day, consecrated not to exultation over vanquished en- 
emies, but to the honor of our dead, is the only memorial we 
observe. 

The passion and the bitterness of the war-time are past 
— God grant forever — and we are not assembled to revive the 
])assion or to renew the bitterness of those days. 

None less disposed to taunt our late adversaries with their 
failure and their crime ; none more desirous to unite all portions 



10 » 

of our land in loving fellowship than are we who fought 
for the suppression of the rebellion. 

We demand no humiliating confession of wrong-doing, 
we ask only acquiescence in the result. 

But our desire for peace and harmony begets in us no regret 
for the cause in which we fought — no doubt of its righteous- 
ness. 

We respect the sincerity of our late enemies, and we admire 
the bravery with which, in the face of great discouragements, 
they so long upheld their cause ; but we cannot allow our be- 
lief in their honesty and our admiration for their valor to be- 
guile us into forgetfulness ot the fact that they were utterly in 
the wrong. 

Cherishing such faith, justice to ourselves and to the mem- 
ory of these dead demands that we protest against the senti- 
mentality which seeks to promote harmony by belittling the 
cause for which we fought and these died. 

We cannot admit that " the sword has been sheathed be- 
tween the North and the South ; the banners of the Blue and ' 
of the Gray have been furled "* — and we deprecate pictorial 
representations of our flag and that of the rebellion gracefully 
draped in trophy, as though flags of co-ordinate powers once 
warring, now at peace. 

True, geographical lines divided the loyal from the disloyal 
States ; but the war was not a struggle between rival sections 
for supremacy, blit between the Government and citizens in re- 
bellion, for the life of the Nation. 

The war ended, not by reason of mutual exhaustion, not by 
compromise and treaty, but because of the absolute victory of 
the Government, and the utter defeat of the insurgent. 

No flag was furled, for ours still floats in triumph, whilst 
the flag of treason was annihilated. 



Annals of the War, Pbila., 1879, p. iv. 



11 

We read the contributions to the history of the war by 
those late in rebellion, and often wonder whether there ever 
were any Confederate armies, so attenuated do their ranks 
become in literature. And we are amazed at the assurance 
with which they who brought about the war now presume 
upon the magnanimity of the Nation, and strive " to promul- 
gate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, 
equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered 
violence and wrong when the efforts for Southern indepen- 
dence failed," endeavoring to cover the crime of treason with 
a varnish of patriotism, so that they who sought to destroy 
the Government might go down in history hand in hand with 
its defenders, " thus wiping out with their own hands their 
own stains." * 

To the sophistry which attempts to reverse the issues of the 
war ; to the sentimentality, which by iteration of " God knows 
which was right," and kindred phrases, tries to palliate the 
guilt of traitors, we oppose this declaration of General Sherman: 

" We claim that in the great civil war we of the National 
Union army were right, and our adversaries wrong, and no 
special pleading, no excuses, no personal motives, however 
pure and specious, can change this verdict of the war." f 

The appeal to the highest court known, among men was not 
of our initiation ; but its decision was in our favor. No lower 
court is competent to reverse that decision. We accept it as 
final, believing that the intervention of that dread tribunal 
will never again be invoked to determine the question of the 
integrity and supremacy of the National Government. 

The cause for which our martyrs died triumphed ; God 
helping us, it shall never be a lost cause. 

New issues have arisen ; growing years and the hard struggles 



* Maj. Gen. Geo. H. Thomas: Beport to Secretary of War, 186S. 
t Gen. W. T. Sherman : Address, May 30th, 1878. 



12 



of life separate us from the war; the fervid heat and en- 
thusiasm of its four years have in the very nature of things 
abated ; but the observance of this day, the presence of these 
thousands, our own hearts, assure us that the patriotism of the 
war-time still lives — that the great heart of the people is true 
as ever to the flag — and are the earnest that these our "dead shall 
not have died in vain." 



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